The Casinos (Gaming Machines and Mandatory Conditions) Regulations 2025: impact assessments - RPC opinion (green-rated)
Regulatory Policy Committee opinion of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport’s impact assessments (IA) in respect of the regulations
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The regulations are part of a package that amends restrictions applying to some gaming products, giving casinos greater freedom about what they can offer customers. The package is intended to modernise the rules that apply to casinos and to help the sector to grow, while ensuring that appropriate safeguards against gambling-related harm are in place. The regulations make two small changes to provide consistency between small and large casinos, including alignment of the machine-to-table ratios, increasing the ratio in small casinos from 2:1 to 5:1.
The nature of the regulations means that they would not impose a disproportionate implementation cost on small, micro or medium-sized businesses, which are not exempt. As the regulations are permissive and deregulatory, they are likely to be beneficial to small, micro and medium businesses also as they would choose to invest in additional machines only where the benefit of doing so would exceed the cost. The IA notes, however, that operators are less likely to be small and micro businesses due to the amount of capital and numbers of staff they need to operate. Given the largest cost to business is purchasing and installing new gaming machines, which is linked to the overall size of casinos, the IA explains that this cost is likely to increase with the size of the business. Similarly, the benefits are likely to be greater for larger operators as they are more likely to have the physical space and financial ability to invest in new machines.
Costs to business include for familiarisation, and purchasing and implementing additional gaming machines. Benefits to business are increased gross gambling yield for casinos and unquantified benefits to gaming machine suppliers and manufacturers. The IA estimates that the regulations would have an equivalent annual net direct cost to business of -£31 million. The total benefit to business over the ten-year appraisal period is estimated to be £271 million.
The IA provides a sufficient level of assessment of direct impacts on business and monetises these where possible. The IA should, however, provide a more robust, balanced assessment of societal costs because of the risk of increased gambling harm, as well as providing more narrative on international evidence. Given the reliance on findings from consultation, the IA should provide more detail on the characteristics of consultation respondents.